Wall Street Journal: Falun Dafa Will Face Further Attacks

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

BEIJING -- The battle between China and banned spiritual group Falun Dafa intensified -- but also grew more puzzling -- over the weekend after another purported member of the group committed suicide by self-immolation.

State media reported that Tan Yihui, 25 years old, died soon after setting himself on fire at noon Friday in a residential district of the capital. Residents confirmed that a person burned himself to death in the location described by the government and state television showed officers covering a charred corpse.

The shoeshine man from southern Hunan province was the sixth person identified by the government as a Falun Dafa adherent to set himself on fire in the past month. In late January, five others set themselves on fire inTiananmen Square. One died and the others, including a 12-year-old girl, remain hospitalized. Mr. Tan's death was immediately followed by more government criticism of the group, which is also known as Falun Gong. The government banned the group two years ago after it protested against the government's refusal to recognize it. Beijing later said the ban was justified because Falun Dafa was a [Chinese government's slanderous words]. Thousands have since been detained without trial, and human-rights groups say more than 100 have died in police custody, some after being tortured to death.

The suicides come after the government sharpened its campaign against the group late last year, including the use of "transformation centers" that remold believers through torture, monetary fines and psychological pressure.[...]

Like the other cases of self-immolation, details provided of Mr. Tan's death only added to the sense that crushing Falun Dafa has become Beijing's top priority.

The state media, for example, reported his death with unusual alacrity, implying that either the death took place earlier than reported or the usually cautious media had top-level approval to rush out electronic reports and a televised dispatch. The 7 p.m. local evening news, for example, had a filmed report from Mr. Tan's hometown of Changde, a small city in Hunan province. Most reports for the evening news are vetted by noon, so the daily broadcast rarely carries reports from the same day, let alone an event that happened at noon and involved satellite feeds from relatively remote parts of the country.

In rushing the news out, Beijing also seems to be putting domestic politics first, even at the risk of international goals. A delegation from the International Olympic Committee, for example, is scheduled to arrive in Beijing this week to evaluate the city's suitability to host the 2008 games. China has successfully used one-sided reports of the suicides to convince many of its own citizens that its crackdown is justified, but the message hasn't played as well abroad. Human-rights groups say the suicides highlight the brutal methods being used against Falun Dafa, and some have argued that Beijing wouldn't be a fit host for the Olympics.

Beijing's selective release of information has also done little to explain why the suicides are taking place. The government has forbidden foreign media, diplomats and human-rights observers from investigating the case. The government says Mr. Tan left a six-page suicide note but it released only three fragments saying Mr. Tan wanted "to renounce his citizenship of the People's Republic of China" in order to be "a brave warrior" in defense of group founder Mr. Li and go to "heaven," according to the Xinhua news agency.

The language was puzzling because Mr. Li, who moved to New York City several years ago, rarely writes of "heaven" or that his disciples be "warriors."[...]

For its part, Falun Dafa said it was "extremely sad and shocked" to hear of Mr. Tan's death but said its teachings proscribe suicide. It also couldn't confirm if Mr. Tan was a practitioner; the loosely structured group has no list of members.

Over dinner recently, a group of Falun Dafa adherents living underground in Beijing expressed amazement at the self-immolations. "These people can't be true adherents because Master Li forbids suicide," said a practitioner. "We don't understand where people got this idea from."

Academics who have studied self-immolation in China are equally perplexed. James A. Benn, a doctoral student at University of California at Los Angeles who is writing his thesis on the topic, said "auto-cremation" has been practiced in Chinese Buddhism, but only about 300 have been recorded over the past 1,600 years. In addition, the tradition seems to have died out. The recent victims, however, might have heard popular stories of people who spontaneously combusted after reaching enlightenment -- or have been influenced by media reports of Korean protesters in the 1990s or Vietnamese monks during the Vietnam war who set themselves on fire.

"My research shows you need to know the specifics before generalizing," Mr. Benn said. "But it is a very spectacular way to die, that can't be denied."